administration, and so, harry reid sent a letter yesterday and told john mccain he is not going to get the special committee he wanted. but i think the administration simply is going to have to watch republicans spend their energy on this. david petraeus tried to make the argument, defending susan rice, that she was repeating talking points, that she'd been given for the reason that the administration did not want to alert terrorist groups that we knew that they were behind the attack. i'm not sure that that's going to quiet the criticism. we're just going to have to see how long it plays out. >> you saw the meeting yesterday with the president and congressional leaders on the fiscal cliff. how confident are you that a compromise will be reached in a timely fashion? >> pretty confident, actually, alex. you know, i thought the outcome of that meeting was about as positive as you could hope to see from a bipartisan meeting of congressional leaders with the president of the united states, all four leaders, pelosi, mcconnell, reid, boehner, spoke positively about their prospects. about not